


Officer Lunchbox Minifics

by acaelousqueadcentrum



Category: Rookie Blue
Genre: F/F, Tumblr Prompts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-01 13:10:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 12,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4021054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acaelousqueadcentrum/pseuds/acaelousqueadcentrum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Assorted Gail x Holly fics prompted from Tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Miles and Miles Away

“Why don’t you come up and see me sometime,” the bartender said as she slipped a card with her number on it into Holly’s hand, “we usually play a set or two on Fridays.”

Holly smiled but put the card back on the bar, reaching for the pen to sign her bill and leave a tip. “Thanks,” she said in return, and slid the black folder back, “but I’m not, well, I’m taken.” She pulled the necklace out from under her shirt, where a gold band hung.

The bartender looked embarrassed, but Holly shook her head gently. “Sorry,” she said sheepishly, “it’s only been two months, so sometimes after work I forget to put it back on.”

“Your wife is a really lucky woman,” the bartender replied, “I hope she knows that.”

But Holly shook her head and laughed, “I try to tell her, but she thinks I’m the lucky one. And she’s probably right.”

The bartender smiled softly in return, and Holly gathered up her things to head out into the light evening rain. Outside, she could see the lights of the Golden Gate Bridge twinkling across the bay and she pulled out her phone and dialed the familiar number.

“Hey, baby,” she whispered into the voicemail, “I know you’re on late tonight, but I just wanted to let you know I’m thinking of you and missing you. And that a hot bartender thinks you should count yourself lucky for landing a babe like me.”

She whispered an heartfelt “I love you” and then ended the call, letting herself look for a moment at the picture of Gail, and the title there on the contact card. “Wife.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title: "Distance" by Jireh Lim


	2. Go and Do Your Thing

“Peck Games?” Holly asked and looked over to Traci.

“Seriously,” the detective groaned and rolled her eyes at her husband and sister-in-law as they bumped and nudged each other back and forth on their way to the bar, “don’t ask.”

“But what is it,” Holly asked again, turning back toward the table.

Traci sighed. “Okay,” she said, “imagine a kind of backyard Olympics, something a frat house would put together for pledge week.”

She paused for effect.

“Now imagine that those two idiots–,” she pointed to the blondes walking back with two pints a piece, “–are the ones who thought it up.”

“Jesus,” Holly whistled, making a mental note to make sure she had the most recent copy of Gail’s insurance card in her wallet later.

“And that,” Traci said with a grimace, “is the Peck Games.”

“No way, they’re planning another Peck Games?” Chris exclaimed, sliding into the booth with Nick close behind.

“Count me in,” Collins added, “I mean, there’s always about a seventy percent chance someone will lose an eye, but honestly, it’s worth it.”  

Gail put the beers on the table and then climbed over Chris to sit on Holly’s lap, slapping away the other officer’s hand as he tried to steal one of her cold pints.

“Yes, you can come, Nicholas,” she said and sipped at her beer, “the more competition, the better.”

Steve dumped a platter of poutine on the table and a kiss on the crown of Traci’s head as he settled back into his seat. “If you do come, Nick, it’ll be just like the original. Remember that? Gail’s eighteenth-birthday? How many stitches did you end up getting that weekend?”

Nick rolled up his sleeve to show off a scar just beyond his elbow. “Seven,” he asked, not entirely able to remember, “maybe eight?”

“It was eight,” Gail butted in, “you tried to beat me to the finish line by sliding between my legs but you caught some broken glass buried in the sand and sliced up your arm pretty good.”

“But,” she said with a grin, “you didn’t cry a single tear, so you came in ahead of Steve that year.”

Her brother kicked at her legs under the table, missed, and hit Holly instead. “Sorry, Hol,” he started before looking at his sister. “It was during the E.T. event, and I fell off Ben Sadler’s handlebars and onto the front wheel. With my junk. You would have cried too.”

Traci just looked across the table at Holly, a look of _I-told-you-so_ all over her face.

~

“So you guys just think up events and compete in them? For what,” Holly asked later that night as she pulled back the covers on her side of the bed and slipped in next to Gail, “I mean, what does the winner get?”

“The right to mock the loser for the rest of their life. Or until the next Games,” Gail answered. “It started as as a way to decide who the better Peck was, but eventually it turned into a way to freak Elaine out. The winner would think up some outrageous thing that the losers had to do. So one year when I lost Steve made me dye my hair pink and keep it that way for a month, right before the Christmas holidays. And when I won, I made Nick talk only in Pig-Latin when he came as my date to one of Bill’s award dinners.”

She turned off the light next to the bed and curled into Holly’s warm body, tucking her toes under her girlfriend’s feet.

“The last time we got together a bunch of people for it, the stakes were a tattoo. One of our cousins won that year,” the blonde said against the soft material of Holly’s pajama shirt.

“But you don’t have any tattoos,” Holly asked, puzzled.

“Yeah, we all agreed that getting temporary ones and texting them to Elaine and Aunt Marcy would be enough,” her girlfriend answered.

Holly hmmm’d and ran her hand up and under Gail’s shirt, letting it rest against the smooth skin of the officer’s back. “Clever,” she said, closing her eyes and letting the dark night carry her toward morning.

~

The weekend actually turned out to be a lot of fun. And nobody poked their eye out.

It ended up being just the two of them, Steve and Traci, and then Nick, Chris, Andy, and one of the many Peck cousins. The Peck cabin was filled with loud laughter, friendly and not-so-friendly ribbing, and late-evening S'more-fests in front of the large fireplace in the family room.

Bright and early Saturday morning, Steve and Gail had picked their teams. Apparently attempting to psych is sister out, who lost the coin toss for first pick, Steve picked Holly for his team. But Gail just selected Nick on her turn, and then Chris, and then got stuck with Andy in the last round.

But once the teams were set, the game was, to steal a turn of phrase from one of Holly’s literary heroes, afoot.

It was tight, and it was dirty, but in the end, Steve and the Captain Awesomes prevailed over Gail and her Persnickity Pecks.

Which meant, as Steve and the rest of the winners decreed, that the losers had to pierce a nipple.

Of course, no one expected any of the losers to actually get a nipple pierced. That would be absurd, really. The real task was simply to make one’s way to a piercing salon and get a picture as if they were about to get the procedure done. Just enough that Elaine would be appalled if she ever saw the picture.

Still, as Holly watched Andy walk gingerly over to the table the Wednesday after their weekend fun, she couldn’t help but wonder. The woman looked tremendously uncomfortable, squirming and grimacing with every movement of her upper body.

“Gail,” she whispered sharply into her girlfriend’s ear, “you guys remembered to tell Andy it was just a joke, right?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title: "Do Your Thing" by Queen Latifah


	3. Making Me a Fighter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Prompt_ : Gail gets a call from another precinct asking if she knows a Holly Stewart and if she would like to come pick her up from their lockup, she was arrested for getting into a screaming match with someone that she called 'tit fixer' at a bar. Takes place before they get together.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Gail said as she reached threateningly for her baton, “calm down.”

The pile of squirming, screaming women on the floor of the bar went still at her command.

“Now, get up and take a seat, both of you.”

The women obeyed quickly, one rubbing at a sore spot on her head while the other inspected a long red line on her arm where she’d been scratched by the first’s long, formerly manicured nails.

“Seriously, Lisa,” the taller one said angrily, “I think you broke skin here.”

The other woman sulked angrily in her chair on the opposite side of the table while Gail opened her notebook to an empty page.

“Alright, who wants to start,” Gail asked in a bored tone. A cat-fight at a bar was not the officer’s idea of fun, especially when they’d missed most of it because Dov didn’t think it was worth throwing the siren for. She looked over her shoulder to see her partner taking statements from the gathered crowd of thirsty patrons.

Figures, she thought to herself, leave me to do the real work.

The short and angry woman opened her mouth to speak first, but the other one beat her to the punch.

“My friend just–”

“Whoa,” Gail interrupted, “name, date of birth, address. Let’s just begin there.”

The woman rattled off her details as Gail took them down–name: Holly Stewart; age: 31 years old; address: Vancouver native, in Toronto on vacation–never looking away from the officer’s eyes.

“Okay, Miss Stewart, now what happened?”

Gail had it pegged as some sort of romantic dispute. A friend who’d slept with the other’s husband or something like that. Maybe one of them came on to the other’s boyfriend. She was surprised to find she was wrong.

“Call me Holly,” the woman said before continuing, “II came to town to visit some college friends–Lisa, here, and Rachel, over there by the bar. As usual our conversation turned to our jobs and our romantic lives. When Lisa informed me that I was wasting my medical degree on the dead, I pointed out that at least I wasn’t giving second-rate boob jobs to suburban cougars. She objected. The thing about Lisa is that she can’t hold her liquor and she gets aggressive when she’s drunk too much.”

Gail looked over at Lisa, who refused to raise her head, and then over to the bar, where the woman identified as Rachel nodded her head in agreement. And then she took another look at the women sitting before her.

Neither looked too much worse for the wear. No one was actually bleeding, and nothing had truly been broken.

She sighed as she thought of the paperwork that an arrest–two arrests–would generate.

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.  You two are going to shake hands. Settle your tab–including,” Gail added, “whatever the barkeeper wants to charge you for the broken glasses and the disturbance, and then the three of you are going to walk out of this bar and go to your respective homes. You hear me? Because if you don’t do what I’m telling you, I’m going to have to arrest you. And I will make your lives hell if I have to do paperwork tonight. Got it?”

Holly and Rachel nod, but Lisa sits, refusing to move.

“Lisa, do you have a problem with that?” Gail asked. “Do you want me to take you down to booking?”

The woman looked up at her with red, wet eyes, thrusting her unimpressive chest out, and Gail struggled not to roll her eyes in return.

“I want an apology,” she demanded, her words slurring into each other, “she called me a tit fixer!”

The plastic surgeon’s whine was pathetic, and Gail covered her laughter with a loud sigh.

“Seriously,” she asked, unable to stop her eyes from rolling up as far as they would go, and sighed again when Lisa nodded.

Gail looked over at Holly, who struggled to keep her own smirk under control.

“Fine, Lis,” Holly said, “I’m sorry I called you a tit fixer. I know you do noses as well.”

For some reason that only drunken logic could explain, that seemed to work, and Lisa nodded.

The rest of the women–Gail, Holly, and Rachel–just shook their heads and chuckled.

After that, her shift went without incident. But for the rest of the night, the pleasant sound of Holly’s laughter echoed through Gail’s head, and for the longest time she couldn’t shake the image of the woman’s smile from her mind.

~

“I’m a lesbian,” Dr. Stewart said as she gathered her things for the day.

Gail absorbed the information, filing it away in her brain.

“Oh,” she said in return, “I just don’t like people.”

Holly laughed, sending an echo down the long, empty hallway, and something sparked within the police officer. A memory, a minute of time buried deep in her unconscious mind.

“Hey,” she said with a grin, “do you know any plastic surgeons?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Fighter" by Christina Aguilera. Prompt from ragingscooter.


	4. Morning Will Come

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Prompt_ : "I Can't Make You Love Me," by Bon Iver

Some nights are darker than others. Some nights are cold and silent and weigh heavily upon her shoulders, her mind, long into the hours of the day that follows. 

Some nights are filled with demons and dreams of terrible things, as every good memory, every thread of love and light is twisted away from her, drug under the pounding waters of her mind, drowned in the tears she won’t let fall.

Some nights she can’t stand to be touched, to be held. Some nights the sound of her name haunts her like a ghost, a spirit of someone, something, long passed on. Long gone. 

Some nights there are screams. 

Some nights there are prayers–to be let go, to be forgotten, to be free. 

Some nights she believes there is no hope. 

For her. 

For anyone.

~

_Shhhhh_ , a voice whispers in the dark, “I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you.”

Warm arms surround her, chase away the chill that’s settled into her bones, and hold her close, hold her tight. When she trembles, when she shivers, when she shakes and shouts and tears stream down her face, her angry skin, those arms, that voice, they steady her. 

They keep her whole.

~ 

Some nights are dark. 

Some nights she can’t love herself, can’t bear to be who she is and what she’s done. 

“It’s okay, Gail,” Holly soothes–loves–on those nights, her voice a beacon, her touch a lifeboat in the choppy seas.  “I’ll love you enough for both of us. I’ll love you forever.”

Slowly, slowly, Gail is learning to listen. To trust.

To learn to love again. 


	5. Flash,  He’ll Save Every One of Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Prompt_ : Any special dreams or goals they have as a couple? Any heartbreaks? Regrets?

Just after they move in together, Gail comes home one night with a German Shepherd puppy, this little hairball of a thing that’s snuggled himself up into the warm fleece lining of her patrol coat. 

Holly knows it’s a lost cause, knows the moment she sees the two in the doorway, Gail with her cautiously excited eyes and the fuzzy baby in her arms, currently licking her girlfriend’s neck with his sweet pink tongue. 

“He failed out of K-9 training,” the blonde says in a mopey voice. “He’s kind of a runt and he has trouble following directions.”

When she steps closer, Holly sees his blue eyes, how against all probability, they’re the same color she falls asleep thinking of every night, the same color she wakes to every morning. 

He really is the tiniest thing, she thinks, bringing a hand up to scratch gently at the back of his neck, to run her fingers along the velvet softness of his baby ears before he captures her knuckle and begins to gnaw on it with his sharp puppy teeth.

It’s hopeless after that. There’s no going back. Now they’re puppy parents and they’re not ready for him and neither of them have ever had a dog before but a quick trip to the nearest pet store and some googleing later and there’s a kennel and a water bowl and a big bag of puppy feed in their back closet. 

Little Flash is here to stay.

* * *

The great irony, of course, is that Little Flash turns out to be not-so-little after all. 

He’s no runt, no matter how little he was when the K-9 trainers decided not to take him. He’s huge, a horse of a dog, and the big townhouse the two of them thought had so much room at first is now just a little bit crowded with Flash always at their heels, or in their laps, or on their bed. 

The “trouble following directions” bit, of course, turned out to be frustratingly true. And their first few months as owners are full of antics and mishaps and stories that are really only funny after a few beers and a little cooling-off time. 

(”Little” is relative, of course. It took Gail months to truly forgive him for eating all of Holly’s fancy underwear. Nevermind that it was her fault for leaving the laundry basket fully of unfolded unmentionables on the floor where he could get to it, she would forever mourn that one deep purple matching set that she’d used her own teeth to pull off of Holly’s body more than once.)

But slowly, the three of them settle into each other and they’re happy. Gail and Holly and their Flash.

* * *

When Gail calls her at work one Saturday morning Holly knows immediately that something has happened. It’s the aching, empty sound in her partner’s voice. 

Her first thought is Steve or one of their parents, Leo or Traci maybe. Oliver or Nick or any of their friends and family who put their lives on the line day after day after day. 

Maybe it’s terrible of her to feel this, but when she finds out the truth, when she finds out what has happened to make Gail weep openly on the phone with her, it’s so, so, so much worse.

Their big, loveable fluff of a puppy is gone. Their Flash, their runt, their “failed out of K-9 school” soft-hearted guy is gone. 

Gail’d taken Flash out for his morning walk, and, like most days when she was off and Holly was not, they’d gone to a nearby park to kill some time, burn some energy. There was little their guy liked to do more than chase after a Frisbee, a ball, a stick. 

Normally their mornings at the park were quiet. Relaxing. Fun. But that morning there’d been an altercation. A man and a woman near the playground, arguing loudly. 

She was off-duty, but Gail was a cop through and through. And when she saw the man raise his arm threateningly, she couldn’t not intervene. 

The police report later filled in the blanks. There’d been a custody dispute, and then a restraining order. An estranged father, angry and desperate to see his children, to make his ex-wife listen, to get her to do what he wanted. To come back. To bring the kids back. 

The tox report identified the drug running through his veins–meth with a little cocaine to boot–and Guns and Gangs traced the gun he’d pulled out when his ex-wife threatened to call the police. 

The same gun he’d pointed at Gail when she intervened, when she stepped in-between him and his ex-wife, him and his children. 

* * *

Flash wasn’t a police dog, no. He’d failed out. Too small. Too energetic. Too impatient. 

But he was loyal and loving. He was kind and funny. He grew and filled their home with his happy barks and his playful hugs and his warm puppy breath in the morning. 

And when they bury him, it’s with his favorite softie and a couple of treats under his nose, the little blanket he curled up with in his kennel when he was a puppy. Gail’s badge pinned to his collar, and the word “hero” under his name on the small headstone Holly picks out for him, Gail too lost in her tears and her grief to truly decide.

Maybe some people would think it silly, to bury a dog, to buy a little plot and a stone and invite people to the little funeral they put together for their dog. But he’d been the love of their life, their Flash. He’d taught them more about love and kindness and humanity than they’d ever thought possible. And he’d saved Gail’s life. 

He was their puppy. 

And when they lose him, when he’s taken from them, they lose a piece of their hearts as well. 


	6. Doctor, Doctor, Gimme the News

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Prompt_ : How do they handle minor injuries?

Gail has this thing about doctors and hospitals–she hates them. Has hated them ever since she was a kid and ended up admitted to the children’s ward for a week and a half after her appendix burst and she went into septic shock. 

Sure, it was really her parents’ fault, their stoic “Pecks can handle a little pain” that had kept her from really telling them how bad things were, but the doctors and the nurses and the needles didn’t quite make a good impression either. 

Anyway, now that she’s a grown-up, or as close to one as she’s ever going to get, she avoids going to the doctor or the hospital if she can. 

After all, she reasons, she’s got a doctor at home. Nevermind, as she often teases Hol, her girlfriend is more Doctor Death than Doctor Feelgood, she went to medical school. She had rotations in trauma and orthopedics and several other types of medicine. And she graduated with flying colors, at the top of her class. 

“Holly,” Gail tells the EMT and Oliver, who’s currently hovering over her, phone in hand, “is the only doctor she needs.”

“Sorry, Miss,” the kid says, holding a pad of gauze to her forehead, “but you need stitches and a scan. Unless this Holly has a CT scanner in the laundry room, you’re coming with us.” 

~ 

Big injuries are easy. Big injuries demand her full attention and all of her focus. It’s the little ones, a little concussion or a laceration needing stitches, even the twisting of an ankle or bruising of a rib that drives Holly crazy with worry. Because with the big injuries, you expect the prognosis to be bad, you steel yourself for the news and the threat of loss. But the little ones, those are the ones that lull you, lure you into a false sense of security. The tiny point upon which your world rests, and all too easy to knock off it’s mark.

When she was a med student doing her ER rotation, Holly saw a lot of big injuries, sure, but it’s the little ones that stick with her all these years later. The college freshman who came in complaining of a headache that slipped into a coma in the waiting room because there was no big warning sign above his head saying “Aneurysm about to burst!” 

Or the parents with the feverish baby–over-protective parents, first baby, cold and flu season. Horses, not zebras, right? Except that the kid had had a bacterial infection and his fever’d spiked to 106, leaving him permanently deaf in both ears. 

So it’s the minor injuries, the ones that are supposed to be simple and uncomplicated, that worry Holly the most. That set her nerves on edge. Until there’s nothing that will soothe away her fears but seeing Gail, feeling the warmth of her skin against her own.

~ 

“Holly, Holly, thank God,” Gail says as soon as the brunette enters the hospital room. She’s sitting there on the bed, hospital gown tied loosely around her waist, a white square of bandage taped to her forehead. “Get me out of here.”

She begins punching the call button next to her in bed, and before Holly can even get to the bed to kiss her hello, there’s a nurse at the door.

“What, what now. You know,” the nurse says impatiently, “I have other patients, officer. Just because you’re a cop don’t think I won’t call Emiliano and Greg in here to put you in restraints.”

She can’t have been admitted for over an hour, and already the nursing staff is exasperated with her. Holly rolls her eyes.

“Be nice,” she tells Gail, bending over to give her a little kiss before turning to address the nurse.”

“I’m sorry, I’ll try to keep her behaved.” 

The nurse huffs, but Holly can see a smile in her eyes. 

“That’s right,” Gail chimes in, “Holly’ll take care of me. So can I have my pants back? Can I go? My ride is here.”

Holly’s taken aback, and the nurse just rolls her eyes.

“Tell you what, let me call Dr. Cobeen in here and he can talk to you. Again.” She looks over to Holly with a  _good luck_  kind of look in her eye before retreating, ignoring Gail’s continued muttering about needing her pants as she does.

Holly takes Gail’s condition in, she seems to be in one piece. There’s some blood seeping through the bandage, and the blonde is a little paler than usual, than she’d been that morning in bed, but that could be the harsh glow of the hospital lights more than anything. At the least, her pupils looked good, she was making sense, and everything was where it should be. 

When the doctor comes into the room he holds up a hand to hold Gail off for a moment before turning to introduce himself to Holly. 

“I hear you’re a doctor,” he says, and then gives Holly the run-down on the injury Gail suffered, the mild concussion she’d received. 

“Honestly, I’d prefer to keep her over night but she keeps saying that you’ll take her home and watch over her,” he says, “and with your medical background, and how crazy she’s been driving the nursing staff, I’m almost inclined to say yes.”

Holly looks back and forth between the doctor and Gail, weighing her own discomfort with the thought of an injured Gail not under medical supervision–official medical supervision–with how angry she’s anticipating Gail will be when she says no.

It’s no contest. 

“If you think observation overnight is the best thing,” Holly answers, not looking at Gail, “then I agree.”

The doctor nods and makes a note on Gail’s chart before turning to leave Holly to deal with her sullen, sulking girlfriend.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she says to the blonde, “I’m not signing you out against advice.”

Gail just huffs. 

~ 

It takes most of the night, but eventually Gail forgets that she’s upset and stops pouting. Sometime in-between Holly sneaking her some ice cream from the cafeteria and the nurses giving the brunette the okay to stay the night, to sleep next to each other in thanks for keeping the officer out of their hair and off of their call board. 

She falls asleep, back to the annoying noises and lights of the hospital hallway, to the feeling of her girlfriend tucked tight against her in the small bed, fingers running soothingly through her hair.


	7. Rack 'Em Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crankie Muppet mini-fic. (Sorry, nowhere better to put it atm.)

They disagree about whether it was a date or not. Because Chloe is totally okay claiming that a stakeout at a monster truck rally was their first date. They sat next to each other in stadium seating, Frankie lost a bet and grudgingly bought her a huge soft pretzel, and after they wrapped up the case and turned in their paperwork, they ended up fucking just inside the door of her apartment after she invited the detective up for a drink.

Frankie, though, refuses to consider that their first date. Yes, even though the crappy Chinese take-out and lame action movie she brought over to Chloe’s three nights later in the hope of an equally satisfying round two seemed more like something you’d do near the termination of a terrible long-term relationship.

In the end, though, it doesn’t matter which date was the first.

What matters is that they keep racking up more.


	8. 'Cause I May Be Bad

“You forgot to say the magic word,” Gail whispered to the woman beneath her on the bed. 

She looked down at Holly, naked, tan skin pinked and flushed with arousal. The doctor’s eyes were hidden beneath a black silk mask, her hands stretched over her head and restrained with a pair of fuzzy pink handcuffs. 

Gail didn’t think she could get any more turned on, couldn’t get any wetter. But Holly moaned and twisted beneath her, bucking her hips up into the blonde’s, and Gail would swear she could feel herself drip onto the older woman’s hard, firm, sweaty abs. 

“I can’t help you until you say it,” she teased, leaning forward to lick the droplets of sweat beading along Holly’s neck. And the brunette whimpered and bit at her lip. 

Gail continued to tease her girlfriend, pinching Holly’s already hard, already taut nipples, and relishing the gasps that escaped from the other woman’s throat. 

“Just.” 

She kissed the side of Holly’s neck, sucking hard and feeling the strong pulse of the brunette’s heart underneath her tongue.

“One.”

She scratched her hand down Holly’s side, flicking first at one nipple, then the other, grinning the other woman begins to pant, unable to breathe normally anymore.

“Word.” 

She ground herself into Holly’s body, sliding herself over the slick wetness there–Holly’s sweat and her own arousal–and the moan the filled the room this time was her own. 

Palming Holly’s breasts in her warm, warm hands, Gail tilted her head up, and kissed the older woman’s open lips. She felt Holly bite at her lip, felt how fast and desperate her girlfriend’s heart was racing beneath her hand. 

Then, she felt Holly’s lips move against hers, felt Holly surrender beneath her. 

And the last of her patience, the last of her willingness to tease and taunt and torment slips away. 

Now–

Now–she’s going to take. 


	9. Exes and Ohs

You want to hate her, because she knows parts of Holly that you don’t, because she’s got ten more years of memories and stories than you do.

You want to hate her so much because she was Holly’s first–first girl, first love, first everything. She held Holly after she came out, after her father yelled and her mother sat silent, unsure of what to say.

You do hate her a little bit, because she was the first to break Holly’s heart, the first to walk away. Four years in and suddenly falling out of love.

_Who could fall out of love with Holly, really?_

But, the more rational part of you points out–Holly’s voice at the back of your head–without this first love, without the woman who taught her how to love and be loved, who would Holly be today? Where?

It’s just like Holly says, when you’re struck by the memory of all the mistakes you’ve made, all the wrong roads you’ve taken–all those twists and turns?

They’ve gotten you here.

With her.

With the woman you love more than you ever thought was possible.

~ * ~

Cath, it turns out, is actually pretty cool.

In town for a weekend seminar, she calls Holly to ask if the three of you could get dinner. And after a few days and some particularly suggestive whispers in your ear, you let yourself be talked in to it. (You were always going to go, but you love watching her roll her eyes at your stubbornness.)

Cath is a corporate lawyer, married to a social worker and has a kid on the way, and she has the largest collection of terrible and rude jokes that you’ve ever heard. The whole night, the three of you laugh and drink together, and you soak up all the stories of a young and naive Holly first exploring the wide world.

And later that night, when Holly excuses herself to the restroom, Cath leans in and whispers in your ear.

“I’ve never seen her as happy as she is with you, or as in love. You’re good for her.”

It leaves you blushing, and when Holly comes back from the bathroom she presses a concerned hand to your forehead.

“Just warm in here,” you tell her, catching her hand to press a kiss to its center as she sits down next to you again.

You sink into her side, overcome with a heat that has nothing to do with the alcohol or the crowded restaurant, and everything to do with love.

 


	10. My Kind of Woman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr Prompt

“You’re my kind of woman, Holly. Lanky brunette with a wicked jaw,” the officer says with a big, dopey grin.

Holly rolls her eyes and looks over to see the nurse mouth “morphine” and point to the IV drip at the side of her wife’s bed.

“Okay, champ,” she tells her wife with a soft, indulgent smile, “no more old movies for you. They make you corny.”

The blonde pouts and shifts in the bed, wincing as her bandaged thigh bumps against the rails of the bed.

“You like me corny,” Gail says and Holly takes pity on her.

“You’re right, love, I do.”

She watches over her wife as Gail’s eyes get heavier and heavier, running a soothing hand through those silky blonde locks.

“Hey,” Gail whispers, half-asleep, “I’m a hero, Holly. I got shot twice in the Tribune.”

And Holly chuckles, because the woman she loves is safe–albeit a bit dinged up–and sound–if a little high.

“I heard it was five times in the tabloids,” she whispers back.

But Gail doesn’t hear her, can’t finish her lines. She’s deep under the morphine’s sweet call, and Holly leans in to kiss that pale, perfect forehead. To whisper a prayer.

“You’re mine, Lieutenant. Tall and curvy. A wicked tongue and a big heart. Don’t you ever forget to come back home to us, you hear?”


	11. Not Running Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr prompt

“Veto,” Holly said, not even bothering to look over at her fiancé.

“You haven’t even heard the idea, Holly. You can’t veto an idea you haven’t even heard!”

Holly puts down her tablet and swivels to look at the blonde, standing at the counter with her hands on her hips.

“Gail, every idea you’ve had has been one variation or another on skipping out on the wedding entirely and eloping instead. Last night you suggested we do it Jane Austen style and go to Gretna Green.”

“You said Pride and Prejudice was one of your favorite books, I thought you’d appreciate it,” Gail countered with a huff.

“It is, and I love that you’re going to pretend the suggestion was some romantic Austen-style escapade, but honey,” Holly says with a serious look, “I love you. And in ten days I’m going to stand up in front of all our family and friends and your ridiculously large line of coworkers-slash-exes, and vow to spend the rest of my life loving you. Even if our mothers have turned into wedding werebeasts and are driving the two of us collectively insane. Okay?”

Gail stood there for a minute, mouth twisted in a look half-terror, half-disgust. Until with a shudder she pushed herself away from the counter and toward her fiancé.

“Ugh,” she groaned, “fine. But as soon as we’ve had our cake at the reception, we’re sneaking out the back to get a jumpstart on Tahiti, deal?”

Holly pulled her closer and nudged her nose into the blonde’s strong, firm collarbone.

“Of course, can’t leave before the cake,” she teased, and felt the tell-tale hitch of Gail’s chest as a laugh bubbled up.


	12. You Have Been the One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr prompt

“How do you say goodbye to someone forever?” Danny asks at the funeral. Twelve years old and already so grown-up.

But Gail doesn’t know. Gail has no idea. 

She’d been asking and asking that question herself over the past year and a half, the long, slow descent into the end. Into the goodbye. 

“I don’t know, Danny,” she tells him as steadily as she can, somehow managing to not stumble over the words. “I don’t know.”

She won’t lie to him. That’d been one of their rules, right from the beginning. They don’t lie to their son. 

Of the many promises she’d made Holly near the end, this one is turning out to be the hardest to keep. 

Four days alone and already she’s having trouble not fucking it up. 

“Maybe,” he says, lips pursed just like his mother. Just as Gail’d seen Holly do a thousand million times over their years together. In the kitchen, struggling to get a recipe _just right_. 

Building the perfect Lego battleship with Danny, toys and limbs sprawled all over the floor of the living room as she furrowed her brow in concentration, fitting in the final piece. 

Troubled over a case, mind turning the details over and over again until the solution appeared. 

He’s just like Holly, Danny is. Long and lean, a natural athlete with a rowdy cowlick and soft brown eyes. Crooked smile and an easy laugh. 

“Maybe,” he says again, looking up at her with Holly’s eyes, “we don’t say goodbye. Maybe we just keep her with us. In our hearts, you know? Like memories.”

In the other room, a huge crowd has gathered to say goodbye to her wife, to his mother. 

But here, in the little side chapel, their son has shown her the way. How to live on in Holly’s absence.

Gail wraps him up in a tight hug, and kisses the top of his head. And she remembers the first time–that first morning, fresh and clean after his first bath. His sweet brand new baby scent, and Holly with her tired, happy eyes. 

“Mom would be so proud of you,” she whispers into his dark brown hair, and lets the twin pains–loss and love–twist themselves into her heart. 

—–

The moment comes to her, years and years later. As she watches their tall, grown boy cross the stage. 

He looks so much like is mother, sometimes to see him is to ache for Holly and the years they lost. 

She’d missed so much, Holly had. 

His first date and his first car. Graduation from high school, from college. The serious girlfriend, the broken heart. His decision to go to medical school. 

Holly, her love, had missed it all. And every day, Gail felt her loss. The empty place beside her in bed. The blank space in the photographs, the unfilled seat at every function and performance. 

But she knows, Gail does, that if Holly could have been here, if there had been any way, she would have been. Knows how deeply they had been loved by her. 

If love had been enough, nothing could have stopped them. 

Certainly not the cancer that took her away.

“Ma,” Dan shouts, catching sight of her and jogging over, “there you are!”

And then he lifts her up into a tight hug, spinning her around. 

“Congratulations, Dr. Stewart-Peck,” she whispers, tightening her arms around his broad broad shoulders. “Mom would be so proud of you, bud. You know she would be here if she could.”

“Don’t you remember, ma,” their son says, putting her down and putting a hand to his chest, just over the strong beat of his heart, “she’s always been with us. We never said goodbye.”


	13. My Stubborn Ways (are Behind Me Now)

Even the box of doughnuts Oliver handed her before pushing her down the hall to the big conference room could not be enough payback for agreeing to do this.

“Oliver, wait, I’m not feeling well. I think I’m coming down with something. I’m a danger to society. You have to let me go home before I hurt someone else with my germs.” She offered a pitiful-sounding cough as evidence.

But Oliver laughed.

“No can do, Peckerino,” he said. “Think of this as character building. And mandatory.”

And then he pushed her into the room, pulling the door closed behind him.

Then she was alone, standing before a room full of vagrants, full of idiots who couldn’t even see the squad car on the side of the highway just waiting to pull their speeding asses over, full of–

Holly.

The room was full of empty desks.

And Holly.

“Oliver,” she called desperately toward the door, “what the fuck is this?”

Gail could swear she heard him laughing on the other side.

She turned on her next target.

“What is going on, Hol–Dr. Stewart?”

But Holly looked just as confused as Gail felt.

“I was just told to be here in order to complete a safe driving course,” she said. “I was going a little fast on my way home last weekend, and Officer Shaw pulled me over. He said I could avoid the ticket if I came today?”

Holly looked over at her, and Gail sighed.

“I think I know what’s going on here,” she said. “Let me make a call.”

~ * ~

Twenty minutes later and a lot of violent whispering as she paced in the corner of the room, she had her answers.

“So,” Gail started off slowly, “I don’t suppose you racked up $2600 in parking tickets here in Toronto while you were living in San Francisco last year?”

“Didn’t think so,” she said as Holly shook her head. “According to vehicle registration you just moved back last month?”

“Yes,” Holly answered, “I’ve got a teaching position at the medical school. I start on Monday, actually.”

Gail forced herself not to react to the news, not more that any casual acquaintance would, anyway.

“Right, okay,” she said with a sheepish look, “and let me start off by apologizing. But it turns out that one of the cousins still speaking to me works in Traffic and seems to think you, and I quote, ‘broke my poor baby lesbian heart.’”

“Okay,” Holly said slowly, not quite understanding.

But Gail continued.

“And in an act I’m sure he somehow meant as a show of support, he may have written you a bunch of parking tickets so that if your name was ever run through the system, you’d be popped for them.”

Her body language testified to just how much of an idiot she thought her cousin was.

“And when Oliver pulled you over, he saw them and thought this would be worth the laugh,” Gail finished, apology plain on her face.

Holly didn’t say anything, just sat and watched as Gail paced–frustrated–on her behalf.

“If you can just wait a few minutes,” the blonde offered, “the idiot is pulling and deleting all the tickets. And if you want to press charges I can take you over to the desk and get someone to help you with that.”

“As for Oliver,” the look in her eyes was murderous, “I’ll deal with him myself unless you want to make a complaint. Technically, this probably counts as unlawful imprisonment …”

Her phone beeped and she looked at it with a relieved sigh,

“Okay, butt-face says your record is clean as a whistle again, so you’re free to go, Holly. I’m sure there’s a million and a half better things you have to do than waste any more time here.”

Gail’s face might have been unmoving, betraying no emotion beyond her anger at her cousin, but it was her voice that said everything Holly needed to hear. The slightest ache there that gave the doctor the courage to stand up, to take a chance.

“Actually,” she said, “maybe we could get some lunch? Talk about idiot cousins and terrible life choices?”

Gail stood there, unsure she’d heard the other woman clearly.

“What do you say, Gail,” Holly asked again, “be my plus one?”


	14. Life is Like

But Holly just rolled her eyes.

“First of all,” she said, taking the box carefully in hand, “you don’t remember? It’s the box you gave to me on our first Valentine’s Day. You said it reminded you of me, and, by the way, when you gave t to me it was already open and all the ones with salt and caramel were already gone because–”

A sound half-laugh, half-snort escapes her girlfriend’s mouth.

“You don’t like salty things,” Gail said, remembering, “and I’d been stuck in a stakeout with Dov–those salted caramel ones saved my life!”

“Sure,” Holly smiled, “and I saved the box because it was adorable–the Periodic Box of Chocolates. I mean, you played it off but I know how much work you put into finding something chocolatey and sciencey for me. Because you gloated about it for months.”

“That’s right,” Gail smirked, “I remember now. I found the perfect gift and I rocked your socks off later that night. I killed it that Valentine’s Day.”

Holly couldn’t help it, she rolled her eyes again.

“Well, this year I’m killing it.”

She held out the box again, careful not to jostle whatever is inside.

“It’s not empty, Gail,” she said again with a quiet, loving look in her eyes. “Open it.”

And so Gail did.

Like she thought, there were no chocolates inside.

Instead, there were dozens of carefully folded little pieces of paper in the individual cups.

And in one cup–the spot for gold, Holly will tell her later, much later–sat a ring.

“One hundred and seventeen reasons why I love you,” Holly whispered, “and one promise to love you for all the rest we discover along the way.”


	15. Dare You to Move

They’re both a more than a little drunk. 

Whiskey and the happy warmth of toasting Gail’s sweet little niece, born just that morning. 

Neither of them will remember whose idea it was in the morning, but the truth is, it was Gail’s.  Of course it was Gail’s. 

Sitting on the soft, plush rug in front of their fireplace, passing a bottle back and forth, Gail sat up, eyes bright and excited. 

“We should play truth or dare,” she said, and Holly snorted as she took another swig, alcohol burning up into her nose. 

“I haven’t played that since freshman year,” Holly said. “Jordan Behr dared me to French kiss Ellen Nguyen and my life changed forever.”

But she agreed, and so the game began. 

It started off simple, but quickly devolved into a series of increasingly challenging dares as the whiskey ignited their competitive streaks.

Gail: _I dare you to do a handstand_. 

Easily done, of course, with years of playing softball and doing yoga giving her a substantial upper body strength. 

Holly: _I dare you to sing the first song that comes into your head_. 

And Gail gave a delightful, if a little slurred, rendition of A-Ha’s “Take on Me,” even rising to dance a little, though a bit unsteady on her feet. 

Gail: _I dare you to call Elaine and tell her we’re not going to dinner next week_. 

That one was a win for both of them. 

Pretty quickly, things turned a little more interesting. 

Holly: _I dare you to take off your bra without taking off your shirt_.

A skill Gail had mastered back in middle school phys ed, of course. 

And then it got serious, clothes thrown about the room as they sat in front of the warm fireplace.

Gail: _I dare you to do a body shot._

To be honest, that one was less dare and more wish fulfillment. For both of them. 

“We don’t have tequila,” Holly whispered, hovering over Gail, both naked but for their panties and Holly’s bra. 

“S’good,” Gail said, back already arching up in anticipation of Holly’s hot, wet mouth along her skin, “s’alright.”

And then Holly pours the cool liquid on her skin, hand shaking and spilling the dark amber liquid all over. It pools in the hollow of Gail’s chest, trails down her ribs, skin flush with alcohol and arousal, and gathers in the divot of her bellybutton. 

Holly giggles as Gail gasps, and lowers her mouth to the blonde’s breast, her peaked nipples, and takes them into her mouth, one and then the other, tasting the salt of sweat and the heady fullness of the whiskey. And she licks and drinks her way down Gail’s torso, tracing the lines of Gail’s ribs with her teeth, dipping her tongue into the pool of liquor at the blonde’s bellybutton, laps it up. 

And the game is forgotten now, lost to the heady pleasure of making love with the person they’ve pledged their hearts and their lives to. 

Later, as the fire hums quietly beside them, still warm on their naked, sweat-chilled skin, Gail presses a kiss to the side of Holly’s breast. 

“I dare you to love me,” she whispers into the quiet, fingers gently tracing over the brunette’s hip. 

But Holly just shifts, pulling Gail more tightly to her. 

“Truth,” she whispers against her lover’s hair, “I always will.”


	16. Fill These Spaces Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The "Sharing a Bed" trope

This wasn’t how she wanted it to happen. 

Of course she wanted to see Holly again. 

Of course she wanted to. 

But not like this. 

Not on the run. 

Not with betrayal nipping at her heels, not disowned and disgraced, with the heavy burden of her family’s sins hanging off her shoulders. 

“I’m sorry,” Gail whispered again in contrition, just soft enough that the broad-shouldered man in the dark suit at the wheel of the car couldn’t hear her. 

Holly just looked at her and shook her head. 

“It’s not your fault, Gail,” the doctor said. “It’s not your fault.”

But Gail knew better. 

Gail knew everything that Holly didn’t. 

~ * ~ 

The threats began almost immediately after she testified against her brother at trial. 

Vile, vulgar, violent, they came in all manner of moods. Slipped under her front door. held by the windshield wiper on her car, in the mailbox, slipped between the door and the door frame of her locker at work. 

Some were notes, some were phone calls, some were just enough to get the message across–there was no place they couldn’t get to her. 

But it wasn’t until the picture that she got scared. 

It wasn’t until the thin manila envelope slipped under her door revealed a photograph of Holly and her, dancing at the wedding where they’d had their first–surprising and tentative kiss–that she felt the fear creep up into her heart. 

It wasn’t until she saw Holly’s head, tilted to whisper something in her ear, gold sequins throwing rays under the , and the red Xs through her eyes, that Gail realized there were some things she wasn’t willing to sacrifice, wasn’t willing to take a chance with. 

Holly.

~ * ~ 

It had been surprisingly easy to get Holly to agree to come with her, into temporary protective custody. Just long enough to make sure that the Federal Vice squad could take down the multinational criminal organization linked to her brother’s illegal dealings. 

Just a soft “Hey, Holly,” and then allowing a member of the task force to explain. 

And then they were on the road. Off to hide away in lazy American motels along rural country highways. Off to pace and wait for news that it’d been done, the arrests’d been made. That Holly was safe. 

Forever. 

~ * ~ 

“So,” Agent Delacorte said with a grimace, holding up a hotel keycard, “slight hiccough.” 

Gail sized him up immediately, trying to imagine what a “slight hiccough” could mean to an American federal agent. 

He looked apologetic, at least, so the news couldn’t have been that bad.

“There’s only two adjoining rooms left. And both of them only have king-sized beds.” 

Gail sighed. 

Because _of course_. 

~ * ~ 

“So, you can take the bed,” Gail said, tossing her bag onto the seat of almost comfortable-looking chair which sat in front of the window with its drawn shade.  “I’m going to grab a shower and when I’m done, we can have Delacourte order or pick up some food. Burgers or something.”

She couldn’t look at Holly. Couldn’t meet the beautiful doctor’s eyes. From the moment she’d first called Holly to let her know about the federal agents who were about to knock on her door, through the long drive, even now, standing in the shared hotel room, she couldn’t truly look at the doctor. At the woman she still–always–loved.

It had been too much, her heart had told her. There had been too much lost, too much suffered. 

And it was all on her. 

She walked away. 

She was too broken. 

She betrayed the ones who were supposed to love her the most.

And now, now she’d brought Holly back into it. 

What could she say that would change anything? What could she say that would make a difference, that would let the doctor know just how much she never meant for this to happen. 

There was nothing. 

So Gail did what she’d always been best at. 

She buried her heart a little deeper under her fragile, breakable skin. 

She turned. 

She let the silence sit–heavy, suffocating–between them. 

~ * ~ 

Holly woke to the sound of Gail, restless in the chair. 

She’d tried to convince the other woman to share the bed, tried to point out just how uncomfortable the blonde would be in the morning. 

But Gail had refused. 

And Holly had given up, well aware that it was best to just let Gail work through whatever was bothering her on her own. 

That the officer wouldn’t, or couldn’t, share what was troubling her. 

It had been like that when they were dating, there had been nights when Gail was angry or grumpy or just looking for a fight. It had taken a bit of time before she realized that Holly wasn’t going to go away. That Holly would let her be angry, watch over her, and still be there to hold her when the fight went away. 

It had taken a while for the blonde to trust.

Holly just hoped that Gail still trusted her. 

“–ngh,” she heard from the other side of the room as she watched Gail kick at a blanket in the dim, dim light of the full moon. 

“No,” Gail whispered in her sleep, “no, not Holly. No. It’s just me, take me, I’ll go–leave–no, no. Holly!” 

She thrashed in the small confines of the chair, struggling to breathe, and Holly rose from the bed as fast as she could to move and kneel at the younger woman’s side. 

Sometimes Gail needed someone to wait, true. 

But sometimes Gail needed someone to hold on to until the darkness cleared. 

Tonight was the latter. 

“Gail, honey,” the brunette whispered softly into the other woman’s ear, a hand delicately combing through the fine shoulder-length blonde hair that spilled messily over the pillow. 

And then as Gail struggled again, trapped by the blanket that was caught underneath her body, Holly spoke louder, firmer. 

“Gail!” she said forcefully, and was instantly relieved to see the gleam of blue eyes look back at her in confusion and concern.

“is it?” the blonde asked, licking at her lips, breathing heavily but clearly unaware of it in the thick fog that refused to recede. 

“You were having a nightmare, honey,” the doctor answered, softer now, gently, and casually took Gail’s pulse from the wrist in her hand. “Your heart’s racing.”

She watched Gail blink with heavy eyelids, felt how tense the other woman was even now, awake, adrenaline pumping through her veins. 

“Gail, come to bed, okay? Whatever is going on, we can talk in the morning. But you need sleep and you always sleep better with me. You said so yourself.”

Honestly, Holly wasn’t sure how much of that Gail understood, but the police officer nodded and moved to get up. So whether she heard or not, the brunette rationalized, didn’t really matter. 

She tucks Gail into bed with care, with warm and steady hands that soothe over the worried brow, and a gentle voice that coaxes other woman back into that safe place between sleeping and waking. And then watches as Gail slips deeper, and deeper, into sleep before moving to the other side and climbing in behind her ex. 

It wasn’t the time for such divisions, she thought to herself as she carefully fitted her front to Gail’s backside, bodies flush against each other, and wrapped an arm around the other woman’s middle, pulling her close. 

Whatever happened in the morning, whatever happened in the past, none of it mattered to Holly. What mattered was that Gail had come. That Gail was here. 

“Shhh,” the older woman said as Gail shifted against her, settling in. 

And then for a moment, it was quiet. Just their breathing in the silent night, lulling Holly toward the darkness of sleep herself. 

Until a soft whisper pulled her back into the moment. 

“I can’t lose you, Holly,” Gail whispered into the dark, and it was the most honest plea that she’d ever heard.

“You won’t,” Holly said into the blonde hair tickling her nose, breath stirring the pale strands, “I promise.” 


	17. Things You Said Too Quietly

“It’s not your fault,” you whisper, coming up to her from behind, pressing your chest into her back and holding tight. 

She feels small in your arms, like a part of her has collapsed, like she’s sunken into her own body. You wonder at her, how her heart has the room beat within her chest, her lungs to expand and fill with air after a day like today. 

“It’s not your fault, Holly,” you try again, but you honestly can’t tell if she’s heard you, if anything you’ve said to her since the moment you found her in the waiting room at the hospital has gotten through. 

She’s been silent. At most, she’d nodded answers to questions, shrugged. 

“Holly, hon, are you okay?”

 _Silence_. 

“Hey, babe, are you hungry?”

 _Shrug_.

“I’m going to order pizza, okay? Lots of cheese and thick crust, just how you like it.”

 _Nod_. 

“Do you want to watch some tv? Do you want to go to bed? Do you want me to go home and leave you alone for the night?” 

The last question, at least, had gotten a shake of the head, and Holly grabbing desperately for her hand. 

The message came across loud and clear. 

Stay.

“Honey,” you try again, resting your chin along your girlfriend’s shoulder, “it wasn’t your fault. You had no way of knowing that there was someone else there at the scene, that’s the our job, that’s the job of the idiots from the two-seven who were supposed to clear the scene.”

The moon is out tonight, bright and full. It makes you think of the first time you saw her skin under the silver gossamer moonlight. 

She’s gorgeous in the moonlight. Under the pinprick light of the stars, the heavy blanket of darkness. 

Even tonight, as her tears catch the light. As her shoulders shake against yours and she pulls the sweater you helped her into tighter around yourself.

“Holly, love, she did what she was supposed to do, she did what she was trained to do and what she signed up to do. Maggie was a police officer,” you tell her, “a damned good one. And when she stepped between you and the suspect at the scene, she knew what she was doing. She would do it again.”

Still, Holly doesn’t say a word. Just leans into you and lets you hold her. 

And you could tell her again, that it wasn’t her fault. That she didn’t nothing wrong. That Maggie died knowing she had done her job, that she had saved the life of the woman she’d been placed there to protect. 

You could tell her a thousand times, you could whisper it, you could yell it, you could shout it out from the rooftop, but it wouldn’t matter. She can’t hear it now, you know. She won’t be able to hear it for a long time.  And there’s a part of her that will never truly believe it.

You know in the same way you know that if you’d been there, if you’d been the cop assigned to watch over her at the scene, you would have done the same thing. 

“It’s not your fault, Holly,” you whisper into the warm skin of her neck, just thankful that she is here with you tonight, that she’s yours. 


	18. Wander Down Another Road

There’s nothing familiar about the busy street she steps out of the cab into. 

But for the first time in months, that’s okay. 

For the first time in months, the strange unfamiliar feel of her body, her life, matches the strange unfamiliar scene of the city. 

~ * ~ 

She’s never been to San Francisco. Never walked sun-kissed streets or stood, looking out toward the bay as the gulls chased the afternoon clouds. 

But already it felt more like home to her than Toronto, with its grey skies and dirty salt-stained concrete. Already it felt like some place she recognized, like a home her heart had built. 

A safehouse. 

Somewhere she knew she belonged. 

A phone rings–buzzes–in her pocket, but she ignores it. 

She’s found what she’s looking for.

~ * ~ 

The door swings open and the fuzzy-edged puzzle pieces fall into place. Before she realizes what’s happening, strong arms are squeezing her tight and her nose is buried in thick, dark hair that smells like lemons and mint.

This, she remembers. 

Her, Holly. 

Her Holly. 

“Gail, everyone is worried about you–are you crazy? Are you okay?” Holly pulls back slightly, running her doctor’s hands up and down Gail’s limbs, checking for damage, Gail guesses. 

 _She won’t find anything,_ the blonde thinks to herself. _All the damage is inside. But it’s less now, now that I’m here._

“We need to call your mother, Oliver–Gail, you had us panicking. What were you thinking, leaving the hospital like that?” Holly asks. 

Gail smiles as she’s pulled further into the apartment, past the threshold, into Holly’s life again. 

“I couldn’t remember the sound of your voice,” she says honestly, maybe even earnestly, “or how my chin fit along your shoulder when you hold me close. I couldn’t remember, and even though I forgot everything else, these were the things I needed to know.” 

Holly looks broken at that. 

“Gail,” she chokes out, lip quivering, “you were in a major collision. You didn’t forget anything, you have amnesia. Your brain suffered trauma. It’s perfectly natural, forgetting things. And you’re going to make yourself worse with all action you’ve done today.”

But Gail just looks at her for a moment, quizzically, like she’s figuring out a riddle. 

“No, Holly, I didn’t come because I forgot,” she offers gently, “I came because I needed to remember.” And the kiss she leaves on the brunette’s lower lip might just be the most precious Holly has ever received. 

“Gail,” she whispers once the kiss is over, resting her forehead against the other woman’s, “you scared me.”

And Gail laughs. “I think I scared everyone a little bit,” she offers, pulling out her phone with its long list of missed calls and messages. “But I’m here now, and I’m safe. And I’ve got my own personal doctor to keep an eye on me.”

Holly pulls her closer. “I’m sorry I didn’t come,” she whispers against the blonde’s cheek, “I wanted to. But between how we’d left things and not wanting to interrupt your healing, I didn’t think it was a good idea.” 

Gail laughs and kisses the taller woman again. 

“No, I had to come to you. I had to break ground, lay the foundation for new memories.”

And Holly doesn’t realize she’s crying until she tastes the salt on her lip, but she does sense the way Gail sags against her, just the slightest. 

“Come on,” she says quietly, and pulls Gail through the apartment–past the living room and the tiny kitchen. Past the bedroom with the balcony looking off toward the bay and down the hall to the small, almost hidden bathroom. “Let’s get you out of those clothes.” 

~ * ~ 

The bath water laps gently against their bare skin, and the soft golden glow of the late-afternoon summer sun as it sinks lower and lower over the water’s edge at the horizon. 

There’s music playing, something simple and slow, and somewhere a candle wafts the delicate scent of lilacs into the air. 

And laying, resting against Holly in the tub, it’s honestly the most whole Gail’s ever felt. Even before the accident.

Even before she woke up a blank slate, all the terrible memories gone, and the good. 

“You know what?” she whispers into the stillness, and hears the muffled “Hmm” against her shoulder, “out of everything, you were the first thing I remembered. That’s how I knew where I belonged.” 

And Holly doesn’t say anything, just holds her tighter, presses her lips to Gail’s pale, warm skin. 


	19. The Home of the Hearts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> things you said under the stars and in the grass

The stars are bright tonight, peeking out from behind the clouds that float and flutter through the midnight sky. Someone somewhere is looking up at them and thinking about heaven, wondering which stars light the path and which marks the door, the gate.

But not her, not Gail, not tonight.

Tonight Gail knows that heaven is a place on earth. A place she somehow stumbled into without even realizing it.

Tonight Gail knows that heaven is this moment, this little patch of grass, and the woman laying beside her.

She turns, the fabric of her dress making crisp sounds in the quiet, silent night, and looks at her wife, the woman she promised her whole heart to, her whole life to, just a few short hours ago.

“Thank you,” Gail whispers, two words with an infinity of meanings. Two words too small for the impossible size of the truths they hold.

_Thank you for finding me. Thank you for waiting me. Thank you for understanding me. Thank you for wanting me. Thank you for believing in me. Thank you for forgiving me._

_Thank you for loving me._

_Thank you thank you thank you thank you._

They mean everything she cannot say, every word that catches in her throat at the realization that this woman–this good, good woman–is hers. The awe of it, sometimes, overwhelms her.

Like the sky and the stars and the thought of heaven. Things she never thought she could reach. Things she never thought would have a place for her.

Until Holly.

Until Holly loved her.

Until Holly loved her and helped her see all the beautiful things she deserved.

Until Holly showed her how worthy she was, how wrong she’d been to ever believe otherwise.

“Thank you,” Gail whispers again, under the light of the stars, brighter and more brilliant than ever, and rests her head upon her wife’s warm, solid shoulder.

And Holly–Holly understands.

“Forever, Gail,” she whispers, a vow more sacred and more holy than any they’d proclaimed earlier, before the friends and family gathered to celebrate in their joy.

“Forever.”

Tonight, heaven is a person and a promise.


	20. True Colors

The thing about going undercover is that it never really ends.

Even when you’ve handed in your fake papers.

Even when you’re cleared to return home.

Things have changed in your absence.

You’ve changed in your absence.

When you were living someone else’s life.

When you were making someone else’s memories.

You don’t get to turn those in, you can’t let them go as easily as your hair color, your clothes, the ID in your wallet that carried a name that wasn’t yours and a birthday that’s a whole different sign of the zodiac.

The thing about going undercover is that no matter what, you never really come back.

Not to the place you called home.

Not to the name that’s always been yours.

Not to the you that you remember.

~ * ~

Two years.

You’ve been undercover for two whole years when it’s finally over.

When Morgan Lynch disappears into the annals of some prosecutor’s case notes and Gail Peck looks back at you from the mirror of the hotel bathroom where you’ve been ordered to stay in-between your briefing sessions.

But you don’t recognizer her, this woman who looks back at you. You’re not either woman anymore, but some terrible cross of both.

Morgan’s flashy red hair and Gail’s simple blue eyes. Your face clean of Morgan’s makeup but still possessing the wan, used look of her features. The reminder of everything you’ve lost.

As Morgan.

As Gail.

As yourself.

What self.

Who are you now?

Who is this woman with empty eyes and lips that quiver and a scar, faint but unforgettable, just along the dark shadows under your eye.

When you sink to the ground, eyes wet with tears that feel like fire against your cold, cold skin, you aren’t even certain who you’re mourning for.

Morgan, may she finally rest in peace. The peace you could never allow her to find when you lived her life.

Or Gail, everything that you lost in those two years you were gone. In those years of fear and stress and pain.

You don’t know.

You’re afraid you’ll never know.

You’re afraid you will.

~ * ~

You visit your mother. Your father. You sit in their parlor and remember the child who used to hide herself away in the corner, just behind the tall, straight back of your father’s chair. Even now, you wish you could curl up in that secret place, smell the leather, the musk of the old book you’d snuck off the shelves you weren’t actually allowed to touch.

You came tonight to see if something as familiar as your childhood home should be could help you remember who you are. Which parts of you are real, and which ones you made up to suit your story.

But from the moment you stepped across the threshold, you remembered.

There’s nothing real about you here.

The Gail of this place was as much a story as the woman whose skin you’d been living in for the past two years, ex-junkie with a heart of gold. Falling for all the wrong words from all the wrong men. Used and abused and struggling to make sense of the world that had never wanted her, never planned for her.

Your life here may have been quieter, may have been cleaner, but you were no less a lie in this home than that tiny apartment over in the Falls.

You just hadn’t realized it until now.

~ * ~

Some of your old friends talk you into meeting up with them at your old bar when they find out you’re back. When they find out you didn’t just leave one day, fed up with the last in a long line of disappointments.

And you know the old you would be offended that they could believe you’d just up and leave.

But the you you are today knows–you could have done it. The Gail you were was always one closed door from running away.

Just always too afraid of what would come next.

But now now. Not this you.

Not the mix of old and new and strange and familiar.

Honestly, now the only thing that scares you is you.   
The mystery of who you are and what you want.

The memory of the things you’ve done.

They ask and ask and ask.

They want to know all of the secrets you’ve had to keep since youleft them, everything you’ve seen and done.

They ask after rumors, begging for confirmation, for just the smallest of details, anything exciting to break the monotony of their normal days.

What can you offer them?

The crimes you committed?

The lives you helped to destroy?

The collateral damage?

In the end, you give them what they ask for.

A story.

Juicy, a winner and a loser, justice prevailing at the last.

What does it matter if it isn’t true?

~ * ~

The knock at the door comes late one evening.

And at the sound of it, the hairs on your arms rise, the blood runs cold in your veins.

Two years of fear, of living constantly on edge, they’ve taken their toll.

But a careful look through the peephole and you feel all the years of worry fade away.

Holly.

Gorgeous, warm, beloved Holly.

You’d forgotten–you’d forgotten how she made you feel. How her beauty somehow helped to chase away the darkness.

Even when the darkness was just inside of you.

Even before you’d lived in it, covered yourself in its rough, icy touch.

“Gail–” she starts to say after you open the door, but she never finishes.

Instead she wraps her arms around you in a tight, tight hug. And for a moment, everything disappears but her. But the feel of her body against yours, the wet sensation of her tears falling onto your collarbone as she holds you tighter and tighter.

Until you can barely breathe, the scent of her, the memory of her, overcoming everything else. Until you’re collapsing into her, weeping as you feel your secret life, your two years living in someone else’s bones, lose their hold on you.

Until you feel everything that was Morgan Lynch slip away.

As Holly’s presence floods you with memories of the truest you you’ve ever been.

And you’re crying for the years you lost, the parts of yourself you will never get back.

And you’re crying for the home you rediscover in her arms.

You came back and sought yourself in all the places you thought you should be.

And you found nothing, nothing but the roles you’d played.

Daughter.

Sister.

Ex-lover.

Friend and acquaintance and just another body in the busy locker room.

But here.

Here in Holly’s arms, you find the Gail you remember.

The Gail who loved, who was loved. The Gail who believed she could be better, could want more, deserved everything.

Holly had been keeping it all safe this whole time.

Holly was the only one who’d known her then, wholly and truly. The only one to know all the colors of her heart, all the hues of her soul.

And Holly is still the only one who knows her now.

Who she really is.

Not Gail the disappointing daughter, the unfaithful girlfriend, the loyal friend.

But Gail. Who loves and trusts and dreams.

Holly had known her all along.

Kept her safe in the years between.

And it’s Holly who recognizes her in you now.

~ * ~

It’s been years now since you left, walked away to try and do something good.

And somewhere along the way, you forgot yourself, lost the trail you’d left behind.

Two years and so much lost.

But it’s Holly who brings you home.


	21. Here's to the Past

“No way,” Holly said, refusing to let Gail grab the high school yearbook back. “You played soccer? Varsity soccer?” 

The blonde fell back onto her childhood bed in a huff, pouting. 

“Elaine made me. Said I had to learn how to be a team player. I hated every minute of it,” Gail answered, glaring over at her girlfriend. “Stripped naked in the parking lot after our last game senior year and burned my uniform in a trash can. Almost got a citation for arson, even.”

But Holly couldn’t look away from the picture. From Gail’s name on the page. 

“Babe, this says you made the all-providence team three years running. You set a school record for goals scored in a single season. You led your team to the championship your senior year.”

Holly’s impressed, that’s clear from the awe in her voice. But the disbelief was a bit much. And Gail rolled her eyes. 

“I got scouted, yeah, but I sign with anyone. I told you, I hated it.”

And Elaine’s voice echoed up the stairs just then, calling them down to get ready for dinner, interrupting their conversation.

But Holly wasn’t ready to give it up. She had questions. So many questions.

“Did you, by any chance,” she whispered to the blonde as they headed down the stairs, “burn all your kits?”


End file.
